The city of San Antonio can expect some changes to their transportation network as a city council committee moves to phase out and ultimately ban horse drawn carriages from the city. The council in question who is moving to make this action happen is the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The committee is a five member committee, who voted unanimously on Monday to begin the process of the carriage phase out. The details of the phase out plan are still being worked out; however, according to the committee’s voted on plans, the phase out will happen within one to three years. In October, a non-voting session will be held with the entire city council in which a presentation will be given with a full-fledged out plan for how the actual ban will work.

The ban follows a public online survey that got a majority support to remove horse drawn carriages from San Antonio.

A horse drawn carriage ban for the city has been discussed for a while now. The original ban was first proposed at the tail end of 2022. Since the original proposal, in order to get more insight to public opinion on the matter, a survey was sent out to San Antonians. The survey received over 50,000 responses, 52% of which fully supported the ban. The other 48% was made up of three sides. One side expressed wanting to keep the carriages operating the way they are, the second side wanted to expand the carriages outside of the downtown area, and the third side wanted to move their operations to just city parks.

Another side of the debate on the carriage ban focuses largely on the “horse drawn” part of the phrase.

One council member, Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, who co-sponsored the original ban proposal, supports the idea of using electric, horseless carriages instead. According to researchers, carriages of this nature cost around $20,000. McKee-Rodriguez explained that he feels they should make some sort of wiggle room to still allow for the business owners who operate the carriages to continue operation in some sort of way. He expressed that this is why he feels the ban should be phased out, in order to give leeway as a transitional period.

From councilmembers and the public, the most commonly expressed reasonings behind the ban support lie in animal welfare and traffic concerns. Some expressed that they believe making the horses work in these conditions is dangerous and unhealthy. The carriage company owners and operators have fired back saying they are being unjustly targeted, and they treat their animals well. They also have expressed that they will go bankrupt with these plans. At this time, it is unknown whether an appeal to the ban will be heard in which the owners can give their side to the story.